Who Built The Pyramids? In the Empire State Building's huge, gleaming, marble-lined, Art Deco lobby stands a small plaque. It singles out some 32 workers and honors them and, by extension, all of the about 3,400 laborers and craftsmen who built what was then the tallest building in the world -- and still one of the most iconic. Their names -- Irish, Italian, Russian and more -- epitomize the American mix in the port city of New York's great 20th Century melting pot. Constructing the towering skyscraper took the team just 11 ½ months -- an heroic feat of both labor and civil engineering, unequaled in speed both then and now. Of the project's approximately 3,400 workers, five were killed on the job.